Each year, it gets harder and harder to narrow down the final list of our annual “Pros to Know” awards honoree list. And this year is no exception as the editors of Supply & Demand Chain Executive whittled the final list down from nearly 400 original entries throughout the course of our 2013 awards program. One thing is clear—supply chain executives, industry decision makers and those in the trenches continue to set the pace and improve their efforts to not only better their business but improve the global supply chain flow. They understand the issues at hand, whether it’s securing component parts against counterfeit scenarios; or addressing the growing issue of supply chain risk; or perhaps even the lack of visibility that many business still have in understanding the market demand environment. Whatever the scenario, many of them are getting onboard with preventative measures to proactively address what-if scenarios before having to react to any issue that may present itself. Perhaps even more evident this year than ever before in our annual awards program is the number of female leaders who continue to take a stand in the industry in supporting their business growth and supply chain delivery. Don’t get me wrong—we’re not trying to relay the “rah, rah I am woman, hear me roar” message within our 13th annual Pros to Know awards, as it is made up of a respectable group of leading men and women in the industry. In fact, a number of female supply chain executives we spoke to exclusively this month (see p. 34) supported the notion that to be a true leader in the supply chain, it comes down to hard work; a complete understanding of the issues at hand and concern to address those issues; and perseverance—regardless of whether you’re a man or woman. On that note, this month, we pay tribute to those leaders who truly stood out from the rest and who we are proud to name our “Pros to Know” this year.—Natalia Kosk, Associate Editor, Supply & Demand Chain Executive

2013 Top Five Female Pros to Know

Mary Kleespies, Director of Supply Chain Consulting, DiCentral

With more than 30 years of experience, Kleespies is a recognized industry expert in supply chain management and B2B communications between retailers and their supply chain. Through her recently released book, “Ask Mary: Making EDI and Supplier Compliance Simple,” industry studies and Webinars, she empowered supply chain professionals to align their practices to better supply chain practices which ultimately affect the company’s broader strategy. For example, DiCentral and VCF conducted a survey to address the percentage of retailers requiring vendors to send an 855 Purchase Order (PO) acknowledgement for a PO that has been issued. Together with DiCentral’s Paul Wagner, she led a workshop at the annual Fall VCF Conference in 2012 that explored the studies’ preliminary findings and solicited feedback from participants concerning their own personal experiences. The final report and analysis will be made available in the Spring of 2013.

As a founder of John Galt Solutions Inc., Omrod has been at the forefront of demand management for nearly two decades. She developed the groundbreaking ForecastX Wizard software for Excel, which helped more than 6,000 customers co-develop and refine their demand forecasting processes. Omrod has also been instrumental as a consultant on dozens of successful S&OP implementations, including major clients such as Dupont, Syngenta and Hasbro. Most recently, she was involved in developing John Galt’s new Scenario Analysis software, which allows companies to develop supply strategies based on the stability and predictability of their demand. This allows companies with long lead times to remain stable and responsive in the face of challenging supply issues.

Sharon Nelson, Managing Director, Plan4Demand Solutions Inc.

Nelson earned a reputation with supply chain practitioners as the “place to go” to seek assistance with that stubborn problem that needs a solution that “sticks” for the long term. As supply chain companies continue to address the increasingly complex demands for innovation and speed, Nelson’s unique mix of industry experience and innovative technological and organizational solutions enables both struggling and best-in-class companies to achieve a higher level of performance. Currently managing a field of 20-plus consultants, she ensures all projects are delivered on time and on budget with the highest client satisfaction. In one case, she assisted Cintas to optimize their existing supply chain processes and enabling technologies to achieve an inventory reduction in excess of $50 million while reducing customer backorders in less than 12 months.

A pioneer of Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM), Kelly-Falls has been at the forefront of the practice for her more than 20 years in the supply chain field. As SCRM evolved, she worked within and for companies involved in its initial engagement. Kelly-Falls’ success in Supply Chain Risk Management comes down to a single fundamental belief that “risk management is not the responsibility of the purchasing organization or the supply chain organization or the finance organization. Risk mitigation is a cross-functional responsibility.” Although this can be a difficult challenge for some companies—as many are accustomed to working in silos—shared input and accountability is key. In order to best manage risk, functions within organizations must work together to share information and mitigation practices.

The leader of a 22-year-old organization that brings sourcing and outsourcing leaders together, Evans looks at the issues facing outsourcing, sourcing and procurement executives and their C-level counterparts both domestically and abroad. Because she is in a unique position of being neither a provider nor a practitioner, she is seen by both as a trusted advisor and is frequently sought out for her knowledge of the industry and insight into the trends. She believes that proper risk management and a strong governance plan are major challenges facing SIG members today, particularly in highly-regulated industries such as banking or insurance. As such, Evans works closely with SIG’s members to deliver content and services regardless of their industry—helping them to manage risk and increase their competitive advantage.

Michael B. Lee, Chief Executive Officer, Airclic

With more than 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s top communications and software companies, Lee is an expert in identifying the avenues that will help companies most effectively achieve their supply chain and finance goals. Through his leadership, Airclic revolutionized and improved the performance of organizations’ supply chain, logistics and field service operations.

With nearly 20 years of expertise in client services, Miles’ unique insight from her work with and understanding of customer issues—as well as her leadership, strategic vision and extraordinary attention to detail—has been integral in Amber Road’s remarkable growth. By providing automation, optimization, transparency, controls and metrics, Miles and her Amber Road team work to make it easier for customers to reach and serve new markets; and extend their global market reach.

As a true technology visionary, Bordner led Amber Road to the forefront of the global trade management (GTM) space and helped its multi-national customers tackle some of their most challenging issues in today’s global market. He pioneered new product developments that integrate compliance, logistics and supply chain technologies that help today’s leading companies automate and manage their global trade operations.

Jim Preuninger, Chief Executive Officer, Amber Road

With over 25 years of software industry experience, Preuninger has been a part of the evolution of the supply chain management market from a domestic focus to one that now encompasses global operations and spans logistics, compliance and trade finance. He founded Amber Road (formerly Management Dynamics) in 1989 and helped define the Global Trade Management (GTM) market.

Robert Shecterle, Vice President of Marketing, Aravo Solutions Inc.

Shecterle’s more than 25 years of experience in supply chain management span supply chain process design and improvement; solution design creation marketing; and supply chain analyst research and reporting. He engineered the solution architecture, marketing strategies and product launches of some of the industry’s most notable supply chain and e-commerce solutions. Shecterle also helped to create and evangelize the SRM solution category and conducted some of the industry’s first research on supply chain sustainability.

Gene Averill, President and Chief Executive Officer, Avercast LLC

Averill continues to provide leadership, direction and his considerable supply chain experience to Avercast LLC, which he formed in 2008. He personally pioneered many of the demand management planning technologies that are commonplace today. Additionally, his Demand Solutions software product is used today by more than 10,000 people in 74 countries. As a result, Averill’s software earned numerous industry accolades over the years, all while saving his customers millions of dollars in inventory savings.

Joe Averill, Senior Software Engineer, Avercast LLC

Averill’s contributions to demand and supply chain forecasting helped move the industry forward to bring sophisticated Web-enabled collaboration to demand planners globally. He created more efficient and effective systems for accessing forecasting data in a variety of structured and unstructured formats. Soley responsible for enabling the cloud-enabled version of the Avercast platform, he helped improve user interface standards through working directly with planners and field sales forces in wholesale, distribution and retail.

With over 30 years of experience in supply chain security and risk mitigation, Purtell provides the tools and knowledge to help individuals and companies achieve the best level of security in their supply chain. Under his direction a number of companies acheived best practice status for the implementation of C-TPAT.

Robinson developed a client lifecycle methodology that transitions a new client from the business development team into operations through the steps of solution design; solution implementation; client transition management; and operations. He directed the development of a new tool used to analyze a company’s installed base of technology and recommends the Choice Logistics stocking locations that would meet a given service-level objective. One long-term client which already used the tool identified more than $600,000 in inventory savings.

Steven Wales, Business Development Director, Decideware Inc.

Wales will be a major driver as Decideware embarks on a series of new programs in 2013 to engage large advertisers in global conversations about what advertisers need to optimize the return on their spend with the agencies. This year, he will lead an industry-wide education program to help all major marketers understand how they can be better equipped to manage a more successful and cost effective agency relationship.

Bill Harrison, President, Demand Solutions

Since 2006, Harrison led Demand Solutions to improvements in its applications; the company’s relationship with Microsoft and integration with its widely-used, Microsoft Dynamics business software; and provided industry thought leadership in broad issues from effective inventory management practices to technology innovation in supply chain management. Under Harrison’s leadership, Demand Solutions became a business partner that looks at how to better enable its customers to operate more efficiently— and improves its customers’ business. Harrison supports a comprehensive approach to providing software that works for its customers and for their customers and constantly innovates to provide better technology.

Thuy Q Mai, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, DiCentral

Responsible for DiCentral’s overall company management, direction and strategy, Mai led the organization this year through a successful completion of the SSAE 16 certification, which confirmed DiConnect’s ability to meet industry standards. Supply chain leaders like Mai provide customers with service that meet and even exceed industry standards necessary for streamlining EDI processes.

Ann Drake, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, DSC Logistics

Involved in the field of logistics and supply chain management since the mid-1980s, Drake continually focuses on strengthening DSC’s role as a thought leader and process innovator in the industry. Since 1994, Drake guided DSC through a transformation from an extended family of 22 separate companies to a strong network of over 40 integrated logistics and supply chain management operations. Today, Drake sees the need to address key challenges—such as sharing information, ideas, best practices and strategies and finding solutions together—to initiate innovative thinking and collaboration up and down the supply chain. As such, in 2012, DSC concentrated on integrating lean principles into its management system to take continual improvement to the next level.

Stephen Craig, Senior Managing Partner, Freight Management, enVista

Craig helped businesses optimize their transportation processes and significantly reduce transportation costs for the past 15 years. Craig understands the big picture of how transportation can contribute to a company’s revenue growth and recognizes the full spectrum of how transportation and supply chains impact the business model. In 2012, under Craig’s direction, enVista’s Transportation Services team saved enVista clients tens of millions of dollars on their transportation spend.

With 22 years of industry experience, Schopmeyer led supply chain projects focused on labor optimization; inventory optimization; transportation optimization; and entire supply chain network designs encompassing all areas. Some results from Davison’s projects have been a decrease in cost per unit by five percent; reduction of inventory costs by over a million dollars; elimination of two warehouses in a network and providing the same service level; and warehouse operational efficiency gains in excess of 40 percent.

David Hale, Chief Information Officer, E2open Inc.

With over 20 years of experience managing technology and operations in high growth and emerging companies, Hale leads E2open’s cloud operations and global support teams. While IT is traditionally associated with servers, storage and network infrastructure, Hale continues to spearhead the movement of the IT function as an important driver of strategic business value—for both E2open and its customers.

During his tenure at E2open, Madhavanur continued to gain the respect and esteem of his customers. He is particularly well regarded for his ability to incorporate customer requests and “lessons learned” into functional aspects of the E2open product road map. From brand owners with little-to-no direct manufacturing experience, to brand owners with decades of manufacturing experience, Madhavanur and his team at E2open led countless initiatives designed to optimize end-to-end supply chain operations and develop truly customer-driven supply chain programs.

In his 20-plus-year career working exclusively in the software and technology industry, Qureshi focused on building customer-focused cultures to provide innovative business management solutions and outstanding service and support. Under his leadership, Epicor continues to inspire customers with innovation. In fact, 2012 marked the third consecutive year that Epicor has been rated the most visionary vendor on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Single-Instance ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies.

David Farmer, Group Vice President, Fortna Inc.

With over 22 years of experience, Farmer helped companies design, implement and operate high-performance complex distribution operations that help optimize supply chain performance. For the last 16 years as a solutions provider, he developed broad experience across software solutions, distribution strategy, distribution operations, labor management and material handling solutions.

Scott Miner, Group Vice President, Fortna Inc.

Miner has over 25 years of experience helping companies plan, develop solutions and execute complex distribution transformations. He successfully delivered complex supply chain transformation projects for major retail and high-tech companies. Miner also focused on the challenge of warehouse management systems (WMS) deployment in conjunction with complex operations and material handling equipment transformations.

Rich Seidel, Director, Fortna Inc.

Seidel has over 20 years of experience in project management including over 11 years managing and implementing high performance material handling systems for clients throughout North and South America. He helped companies extend the life of their existing distribution centers (DC’s) by retrofitting them with newer technology or outfitting Greenfield DC’s with new systems and equipment. The majority of his retrofit work over the past five years enabled his clients to reach new service levels or reduce unit costs while postponing larger capital expenditures.

Derek Smith, Chief Commercial Officer, GHX

With more than 20 years of industry experience and as the leader of GHX product management, Smith drives the development of software solutions that will create a more connected, efficient and streamlined supply chain infrastructure for the healthcare industry. One key deliverable in support of this goal is the initiative Smith currently leads to develop supply chain solutions for the OR, which will track the purchase and use of implantable medical devices (e.g. hips, knees, cardiac stents, etc.), including physician preference items (PPI).

Steve Dollase, Executive Vice President, Supply Chain, Inmar Inc.

In his nearly 30 years of experience in military and civilian supply chain leadership, Dollase delivered value-creating and life-preserving strategies to maximize the efficiency, precision and dependability of the supply chain. Dollase established Inmar Intelligent Quality (Inmar IQ), a highly specialized team that provides world-class supply chain and process improvement and quality capabilities to improve cost and outcomes across the Inmar enterprise as well as externally in a consultative capacity with Inmar’s clients.

Tom Beaty, President and Chief Executive Officer, Insight Sourcing Group

With over 20 years of strategic sourcing and management experience, Beaty rapidly built one of the largest ‘pure play’ strategic sourcing firms in the country. Insight Sourcing Group not only drives results—it also provides a compelling ROI for clients, exceeding 850 percent in 2012 for year one returns on investment.

Brent Eiland, Executive Vice President, Insight Sourcing Group

Eiland helped lead the development of Insight Sourcing Group’s delivery structure, project methodologies and diagnostic tools, leveraging all of these to solve significant client supply chain issues, especially as they relate to procurement and sourcing. Eiland’s efforts to hire, develop, lead and retain an outstanding team of analysts, managers and seasoned sourcing professionals within ISG resulted in a company turnover of less than three percent over the history of the firm.

Brian Houpt, Senior Vice President, Insight Sourcing Group

With 18 years of supply chain and strategic sourcing experience, Houpt co-leads the ISG delivery organization; is the practice lead for ISG’s innovative Consortiums practice; and leads ISG’s Transportation practice. In order to address the management of price changes, Houpt worked with his clients to ensure that there are well-defined mechanisms for determining pricing like tying price changes to a published third-party index or requiring specific manufacturer documentation to support price increases.

Jacob Wojcik, Senior Vice President, Insight Sourcing Group

With over 13 years of experience in management consulting with a focus on procurement, supply chain management and finance, Wojcik helped establish ISG’s footprint within the private equity sector in which ISG is now working with over 40 PE firms to drive procurement-related EBITDA improvement across 200-plus private equity holding companies. He believes that procurement and supply chain leaders must learn to navigate stakeholder resistance more effectively and manage through the use of data, facts, and logic.

Responsible at JDA for developing strategic supply chain innovations for the consumer products industries, Halim believes that CPG companies are capable of keeping customers happy and winning at the cash register—if they form tighter bonds with retailers and target assortments more precisely than ever before. CPG manufacturers—particularly their category management executives—struggle to stock retail aisles with the right SKUs and assortments. In response to such business challenges, Halim helps his customers find solutions and services to improve category management.

Kelly Thomas, Group Vice President of Global Accounts, JDA Software Group Inc.

Thomas has nearly 30 years of experience in leading teams in design, development, sales and delivery of supply chain management solutions—including implementations at more than two dozen leading practitioner companies across the globe. To face such challenges as demand variability, globalization, new product introduction and increasing customer expectations, supply chain managers should seek strategies that deliver profitability, reliability and agility. As such, Thomas works with clients to implement four strategies to achieve these goals: 1). Segment for profitable, differentiated customer relationships; 2). Drive the supply chain from real demand; 3). Synchronize and provide visibility; and 4). Optimize the use of resources.

Welty helped hundreds of companies select the proper solutions to attain increased revenues, profits and efficiencies. He believes that today’s connected consumers are transforming the traditional retail experience based on their unprecedented access to information—with which comes incredible new power. For his customers, Welty recommends the following steps that will help them deliver a true omni-channel shopping experience: 1). Enhance the customer connection; 2). Break down channel barriers; 3). Build profit intelligence into experience strategy; and 4).Translate loyalty into long-term success.

James V. Kelly, CPM, Chief Executive Officer, JVKellyGroup Inc.

For the past 10 years as CEO of JVKellyGroup Inc., Kelly has been active in charting the course of major corporations in expense and risk management solutions. With an extensive knowledge of sourcing and the effect that our current economic turbulence has on our profession, he believes that we run the real risk of hyper-inflation at the end of 2013 and in 2014—which will devalue the dollar against foreign currencies. This translates into a change since the labor arbitrage off-shoring of the last few years may lose their cost effectiveness and actually cost more. He advises businesses in the supply chain to be to be vigilant and to defend their supply chain portfolio.

Bob Lucas, Vice President, Global Solutions, Kelly Services Inc.

Since the early 1990s, Lucas helped to shape the human capital industry as a well-known subject matter expert on vendor management systems and its application to talent supply chain management. His extensive leadership experience and knowledge across multiple channels in the industry brings a global perspective and creative solutions to Kelly’s clients. The leader of Kelly’s Life Sciences solution group, he works with Kelly’s Life Sciences client portfolio and prospects to design talent supply chain solutions that will provide the access to talent that is required to stay competitive in the highly competitive and regulated life sciences industry.

Jennifer Spicher, Vice President, KellyOCG, Kelly Services, Inc.

With 16-plus years in the human capital solutions industry, Spicher is responsible for the architecture and solutions design, implementation, delivery and overall customer satisfaction of managed service provider programs globally with Kelly Services. She believes that the key challenges our organizations face is the ability to implement a talent supply chain solution—one that takes a holistic view of talent procurement. Each client requires a custom approach based on corporate strategic objectives; readiness for change; and geographic footprint. Utilizing this customized approach, Spicher secured new business equaling nearly $1 billion in managed spend within Kelly Services’ client’s talent supply chain with the last 24 months.

Healy brings an analytical approach—using data and statistical analysis—and years of experience to drive both efficiency and effectiveness throughout the talent supply chain. Healy spends the majority of his time consulting with clients in the design and delivery of workforce solutions built to meet the talent acquisition and utilization, compliance, risk mitigation, cost savings, supply chain and process efficiency demands necessary to succeed in the globally economy.

Jaret Lynch, Vice President of Professional Services, LogFire

With more than 15 years of experience in supply chain software, Lynch has a proven track record of having successfully implemented multiple solutions for retail, pharmaceutical, direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, wholesale and 3PL customers in North America and Europe.

Having led LogFire since 2007, Pantoja-Navajas proved to be a forward-looking industry leader, leveraging his deep supply chain expertise to introduce a deep functional suite of Cloud-based SaaS priced solutions and managed services for the supply chain industry

For 20 years, Bertram earned the trust and respect of his customers and colleagues with his ability to serve as a trusted advisor versus simply a vehicle for a sale. He believes that the key to success is to ask prospects as many questions as possible; and to really listen to what they are telling you in order to understand their challenges. He works closely with his customers before, during and well after the sale to ensure that each implementation of MetaViewer is as successful and beneficial as possible.

Fred Minturn, President and Chief Executive Officer, MSX International

Through his leadership and refocus on the Managed Service Provider (MSP) solution in 2009, Minturn enabled MSXI to more than double the headcount under contract in three years. The company enjoyed a 100 percent client retention rate. As a result of Minturn’s guidance, MSXI is a leader in managing professional placements in the global automotive industry during the recent recovery.

Jon Winsett, Chief Executive Officer, NPI

With more than 22 years of experience leading IT companies in the U.S. and abroad, Winsett worked for the last decade with the world’s most recognized retailers, manufacturers and suppliers to improve supply chain efficiency and profitability. In 2012, NPI saved companies more than $620 million on technology and transportation investments. Winsett’s supply chain spend management expertise helped more than 400 clients reduce IT and logistics costs; and extend their budgets further.

A pioneer in the development of solutions using passive RFID technology to track transportation assets and shipments information in real-time, Gollu drives further innovation for the company’s best-in-class advanced yard management and visibility solutions. His vision helps Fortune 500 companies and others gain end-to-end trailer/container and shipment visibility; increase productivity; and reduce costs. Gollu’s leadership also enabled PINC and its customers to receive more than 15 industry awards, including recognition from Gartner as a “cool vendor” in supply chain management.

Mike McDonald, Vice President of Business Development, Prime Advantage

McDonald is responsible for assuring that Prime Advantage’s members are made of top-notch manufacturers. Since 2005, he helped the company double its membership from 350 manufacturing companies to more than 750 U.S. manufacturers in more than 25 different markets in 2012.

Dennis Toohey, Director of Solutions, Puridiom

An advocate of e-Procurement and Puridiom for more than 20 years, Toohey brought procurement automation awareness to manufacturing; health plan organizations; private education; and non-profit organizations. A believer in using technology to reduce cost, he wrote and for two years taught a course on this subject in the Graduate Business School University Wisconsin Madison. Today, he leads the development of Puridiom’s new eMarketplace. He also continues to consult with Puridiom clients on Procure to Pay (P2P) best practices.

Davison manages Railinc’s business operations and oversees all product lines, which serve to improve the safety and operational efficiency and effectiveness of the North American freight-rail transportation industry. Under his leadership, Railinc delivered 10 rail industry projects and an EDI upgrade in 2012 that met vital demands for rail transportation information and improvements in rail operations. He also directed Railinc’s participation in the Asset Health Strategic Initiative, launched in 2012 and projected to save the industry millions of dollars annually upon maturity.

Jon Bovit, Chief Marketing Officer, Resilinc

With more than 25 years of industry experience as a technologist, strategist and marketer, Bovit focused on supply chain and procurement solutions for more than a decade. As customers face many key supply chain challenges ahead in 2013—particularly in the area of supply chain risk and resiliency—Bovit’s focus going into 2013 will be to help customers create proactive and scalable strategies for mitigating potential multi-tier global supply chain disruptions.

Greg Silich, Advisory Board Member, Resilinc

Throughout his 15-plus-year executive career, Silich delivered a unique C-level value proposition within rapid growth businesses, an entrepreneurial start-up and a large multi-national company involving organic growth; transformation; market diversification; globalization; tuck under acquisitions; large scale mergers; and organizational restructuring.

Mark Davis, CTO and SVP of Operations, SafeSourcing Inc.

For the past 15 years, Davis focused his skills on the retail and supply chain side of business helping to develop and market products and services to fit each industry. He believes there will be a continued focus on its customers getting access to mission-critical data and being able to access that data from mobile devices. The company has several new tools and reports that will be available for its customers in 2013.

Ryan Melowic, Director of Customer Services, SafeSourcing Inc.

With over seven years in the procurement industry procuring items from supplies to fuel, Melowic identifies specifications for items and asks the appropriate questions to uncover terms and price protection language. He also helps identify how procurement departments can better align with their company’s broader strategy by understanding the major financial goals.

Ronald D. Southard, CEO, SafeSourcing Inc.

With a career in supply chain spanning from the 1970s, Southard is considered an in-depth category specialist across a very wide range of categories and his customers look to him regularly for guidance relative to complex spends. He believes the No. 1 challenge is to bring companies, suppliers and supply chain knowledge workers together in a collaborative and cooperative forum where the sourcing practitioner’s view of their category is improved, automated, cost effective and measureable in a triple bottom line view.

Wilcox helped retailers obtain greater than 20 percent savings on their not-for-resale spend for more than five years by utilizing the latest e-procurement tools and procurement best practices to leverage spend and maximize competition among suppliers. She helps organizations save money on purchases and helps suppliers grow their business. Even in areas that are highly service oriented—such as unloading services—she delivered cost savings and helped organizations turn what was once a company cost into a line of income from manufacturer allowances.

Tony Harris, Vice President of Solutions, Procurement Line of Business, SAP

With over 20 years of experience across both Finance and IT, Harris spent the last 10 years focused on the procurement solutions sector. In that time, he worked with some of the world’s largest organizations to define supply chain solutions that drive sustainable cost savings, process improvements and business insight to support imperative strategies. With a technology background of ERP, CRM, business intelligence and procurement, he understands the end-to-end business process surrounding supply chain and is able to combine these various technologies to address the evolving needs of today’s organizations.

Dave Brooks, Vice President, Supply Chain Innovation, Software AG

Brooks leads a team that partners with clients to create business value through greater agility, control and visibility across the supply chain. In 2012, he guided the team that brought Software AG’s “iKnow” Supply Chain Visibility solution to the market. One innovation that Brooks introduced in iKnow is “Content in Context,” combining real-time interactive analytic content within the context of a business process, such as Order-to-Cash. iKnow unites business intelligence and process modeling and execution to provide real-time visibility into the right information at the right time at the right step in the process.

Sean Riley, Director, Supply Chain Innovation, Software AG

Riley works directly with companies, including many of the Fortune 100, to help them create more agile supply chain functions. He also works closely with clients to help them leverage supply chain technology to transform the way they do business. Riley was also a main driver behind Software AG’s iKnow solution, which allows customers to quickly identify and resolve supply chain problems before they become major issues within the context of an overall process to ensure the problem is not pushed to another partner or department. With over 10 years of experience, Riley continues to focus on areas which include value discovery and enablement; process improvement; financial and economic modeling; and collaboration enablement.

In his more than eight years leading Storeroom Solutions Inc., Tellez guided the company through a substantial growth period—averaging 20 percent annually—which included expansion of its international presence to Puerto Rico in 2008), Mexico in 2011) and Costa Rica in 2012), supplementing an already existing entity in Canada. Under Tellez’s leadership, Storeroom Solutions continues to adapt to the changing industry landscape by listening to and learning from its customers and prospects.

Robert F. Byrne, CEO, Terra Technology

Dedicated to helping manufacturers improve forecast accuracy, Byrne works with some of the world’s leading CPG companies to control the effects of volatility with innovative software solutions that use current supply chain information and new mathematics to provide the most likely prediction of future demand; set more accurate inventory targets; and forecast future transportation and warehouse requirements. Through programs such as Terra Technology’s annual Forecasting Benchmark Study—initiated by Byrne— he provides unique insight into supply chain performance for industry; helps customers evaluate their strengths and weaknesses; and adopt forecasting excellence best practices.

Frank McGuigan, Executive Vice President of Operations, Transplace

With more than 20 years of logistics experience in executive leadership, sales and operation, McGuigan focused on the development and implementation of value-based, logistics solutions across the supply chain for Fortune 500 companies. He holds P&L responsibility for all of Tranplace’s third party logistics, brokerage and SaaS relationships. For all of its customers, McGuigan and his team leverage the Tranplace engineering group to ensure that they have the right node/transportation balance; mode mix; and maximized payload so that cost increase is not parallel with revenue growth.

Mike Regan, President, TranzAct Technologies

Since Regan founded TranzAct Technologies in 1984, the company completed over 1000 client implementations; and processed over 600 million freight bills representing over $75 billion in freight bill payments. In 2011, Regan recognized the need to address the growing issue of transportation risk management. He founded Active Scout and designed its premier product, Shipper Shield, with the premise that you must know who you are doing business with. Shipper Shield protects shippers from transportation risk by evaluating all of a shipper’s carriers and brokers and their operating authority, contracts, insurance, financial position and safety ratings.

Rahul Ahuja and Mark Usher, Co-Founders of Treya Partners

With over 15 years of supply chain experience as a practitioner and consultant, Ahuja helped several private equity firms design and launch successful portfolio procurement programs in categories as diverse as purchased electronic components; small parcel freight; industrial supplies and telecommunications services. With over 20 years of supply chain experience as a practitioner and consultant, Usher helped benchmark current practices and redesign the procurement operating model for a consortium of state governments in addition to having launched an innovative “procurement tune-up” training workshop focused on savings realization techniques for procurement professionals.

2013 Practitioner Pros To Know

Douglas Kent, Global Vice President, Avnet Velocity, Avnet Inc.

In leading Avnet Velocity, Kent finds ways to help customers and suppliers improve supply chain effectiveness and drive Avnet’s forward-moving capabilities by focusing on supply chain innovation far beyond what is expected from the distribution channel. This strategy is directly coupled with its corporate organic growth and customer engagement strategies, with significant emphasis placed on the effective use of technology in providing visibility and insight to the evolving dynamics of the global electronics marketplace.

Understanding the asymmetric threat to National Security and the global supply chain, leadership at CACI International takes proactive and innovative measures to protect the supply chain of its customers as well as its own. CACI’s Enterprise Technology Solutions (ETS) business group is a standards-based organization which promotes the use of management systems to instantiate business best practices in a manner that enables monitoring, control and improvement within the organization. The ETS business group evaluated various disciplines in order to determine which ones could be coupled to address holistic security practices within the supply chain.

Scott Crutchfield, Chief Operating Officer, Crocs Inc.

Crocs, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2012 and reached $1 billion in annual sales for the first time, has grown from selling 12 styles to today’s more than 300 footwear styles. To manage distribution center efficiencies and increase production timelines, Crutchfield shifted relevant responsibilities—such as value-added packaging and markings on footwear—from distribution centers to manufacturing locations. These changes have resulted in eight to 10 percent total product cost savings.

As the senior executive in charge of corporate purchasing, Schuman is responsible for defining and implementing strategic sourcing decisions overall within DG3. His strategy is straightforward as implementation of a strategic sourcing methodology is key to DG3’s long-term success. The essential element of the methodology is “right” supplier base. Competitive supplier selection is an iterative process. The approach DG3 takes allows Schuman and the company to build a fact base; formulate a strategy; generate requirements; and negotiate pricing.

At Hy-Tek Material Handling, Connor is responsible for operational problem analysis; solutions design; sourcing; integration; installation; training; and on-going support for their supply chain distribution clients. His strategy is to have supply chain functions provide a significant impact on both lowering costs and providing better customer service by first becoming efficient throughout the distribution channel; and secondly, by meeting challenging customer demands with automated and innovative custom services and error-free deliverables. Only by differentiating from the competition can suppliers earn loyalties and increased profits. Connor was also appointed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to advocate actions that result in job creation, business investment and a strong economy in Ohio.

Sam Bethea, Vice President, Process Excellence, SDI Inc.

Bethea drives continuous improvement activities and delivers best results to SDI clients. With responsibilities that include field support, training and managing the nationalized network of over 20 reliability engineers throughout the US, Canada and Mexico, Sam and his team work to find value in—and improve upon—the supply chain of each client.